


We Thought We Were Young

by jonasnightingale



Series: Heavy Accents & Swollen Ankles [4]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Pre-Relationship, Rollisi, Tumblr request, s21e10 fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:21:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26579764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonasnightingale/pseuds/jonasnightingale
Summary: Tumblr prompt - after Must Be Held Accountable, Carisi stays to make sure Rollins is good and confesses feelings/how worried he was.
Relationships: Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr. & Amanda Rollins, Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr./Amanda Rollins
Series: Heavy Accents & Swollen Ankles [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1595524
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	We Thought We Were Young

Her voice carries through the quiet of the apartment and it simultaneously soothes his frayed nerves and lets the suppressed panic bubble up. His heart is in his throat, his hair destroyed from hands running through it unrelentingly. He should go home, get an hours sleep, shower, change his clothes; but the thought of being away from her sets a new shake to his hands. So he putters around, does the dishes, shakes his head at the sparse kitchen cupboards, trails his fingers over photos. He picks up an unfamiliar frame with three matching smiles and one blurred wagging tail - they’re all at some park or nature reserve and the happy scrunch of Amanda’s nose almost brings him to tears, Franny is mid-lick on a laughing Jesse’s cheek and Billie is staring up at her mother in awe. He wonders who took the photo. He looks around and takes in the other ways the apartment has changed since he was last here; new drawings on the fridge, a new rug on the floor, different books and journals scattered around. It has been so long since this home was foreign to him, but his eyes catch on the unfamiliar scarf by the door, the train set spilling across the floor that hadn’t ever warranted a second look the day they’d first unpacked it. They’ve been living a life he is no longer embedded in. And there’s a voice in his head, _her_ voice, broken and exasperated and hurt, reminding him - “ _you walked out on me”._ These past twelve hours he’s realised just what she meant, how right she had been to accuse him of that. Because when Liv had asked where she would go, he couldn’t answer. He didn’t know if she was seeing someone, or if she’d been back at GA, or where to start looking. All those years, all the crises and smiles and not knowing what tomorrow held, and he’d never felt so helpless.

He’d made them pancakes while Amanda had washed the night off her, and with Billie babbling in her high-chair and Jesse “supervising” his cooking, it was like last night had been just a nightmare. But Jesse kept swiping her arm tiredly across her eyes, and when Amanda poked her head around the corner to check on them, her own eyes were puffed and bloodshot.

The anxiety is still drumming through his veins. He tries to focus on her voice, on the rhythm of her accent as she reads story after story to the girls, tries desperately to not think about the places his mind had gone in the early hours of the morning. Liv had been so insistent, _“she’s a fighter, she can handle herself”_ and all he had been able to think was that he’d never get to spend another night watching reality TV with her half dozing on his shoulder, that he’d never again get to make her cannolis, or laugh off the sweet old neighbour who thought they were married, or catch her eyes across the courtroom. He had wondered how his sisters would ever look at him again, if their teasing smiles were forced into pity and concern. He perches on her couch and drops his head into his hands, focusing on the pressure of his eyes squeezed tight, breathing in deeply the scent of musk and vanilla that sat in the air. 

She watches him for a time, lets her eyes trace over the slump of his shoulders, the tension in his arms. The last thing she’d said to him yesterday was cruel, another in the steady stream of shots at his job, attempts to remind herself over and over again that he wasn’t hers to lose anymore. And yet he’d still been there, making sure she got home safe. He’d held her so tight, let her cry into his shirt, driven her home, locked the doors, made the girls pancakes. He hadn’t left. Her gaze lingers on the new grey around his temples, and she remembers that day at the hospital, when he’d ducked his head and met her eye, _“I am not going anywhere”_. She wants to wrap her arms around him, tuck her head into his shoulder and ask him to be the nice guy who proves her wrong, who shows her girls that they deserve more. But she’s always asking too much of him, and she’s trying to respect the boundaries he’d put up between them.

He feels the couch dip beside him and snaps his head up. She looks calmer, softer. “The girls are asleep, guess it was a rough night all round.” He feels a corner of his mouth twitch up in a lame attempt at a smile. She lets out an aborted exhale of a laugh. Their eyes meet and for the first time in so long, neither of them glances away. He hears rather than feels his breath catch raggedly in his throat, a rough sob strangling out of his mouth. Amanda’s eyes go wide for a beat before her hands are on his cheeks pulling him into her. He gasps against her collarbone as his fingers grab for purchase on her shirt and her palms rub soothingly up his back. It’s almost comical that the sun is tracking its progress across the sky with such a cheery gaze. A scene like this feels like it should be shrouded in darkness, in stars in the sky and the night-time hush of the city, not the pre-lunch rush. His phone has been buzzing non-stop, he knows he’ll need to head back to the office soon, but he needs these moments first, needs to convince himself they made it through, that she made it home. 

He whispers her name in a low drawl, and she fights the shiver at having him so close, at having his voice dance across her skin like this. Her hand traces around his ear, curves around his jaw, slips past his temple, “It’s a’right Dominick, we’re all alright. Nothing a bit of sleep won’t cure.” He pulls back slightly to read her expression and she subconsciously bites her lip at the proximity, flitting her eyes across his face. This close she can clock the bruise of exhaustion under his eyes, the new lines across his face; she doesn’t want to think about what he can see in hers. She feels his exhale in a puff of air across her cheek, “You scared me last night Rollins.” A quiet confession. She nods, gaze not leaving his, “Yeah, scared me too.” His gaze drops to her lips, and the air between them feels suddenly loaded, heavy like that night in Virginia. She wants to drag him in, finally feel the push of his mouth on hers, but there’s always been so much at stake with him and some distant part of her brain tells her ‘not like this’. His lips quiver into a small rueful smile and then his eyes are closed and his forehead is pushed firmly against hers, his fingers loosely gripped around her wrist. His voice is quiet in the space between them but with her eyes following the shape of his mouth around the words she doesn’t miss a thing, “‘Manda, thanks for coming back.” She sighs out and lets a small smile flit across her face, her eyes slipping shut as her spare hand slips back into his hair, “Thanks for being here."

**Author's Note:**

> “I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love.” - Dave Eggers, What Is The What


End file.
